


The Next Step

by DonJonson



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drama, F/F, F/M, Female Peter Parker, Irondad, M/M, Multi, Or Is It?, Original Character(s), Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rewrite, Slow Updates, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, no beta we die like women
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:29:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29853966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonJonson/pseuds/DonJonson
Summary: REWRITE OF STEP FOURLife was not kind to her. The only reason why she was still alive was because someone wanted to see how much pain she could handle.However, she wasn't weak.Like iron, she could bend and even rust, but she would still be made of iron.No one, no even her ex family would take her liberty ever again.It wasn't easy, and she wasn't ready, but she would take the next step to freedom.
Relationships: Harley Keener & Peter Parker, Harley Keener/Peter Parker, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29





	The Next Step

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, every one. I hope you enjoy this new work. I know it has details, but it is still a good story. I have some warning, this work has some delicate themes like PTSD, child neglecting, between others. It will also update slowly. I truly hope you enjoy it and recommend it.

The Next Step 

The rain was cold.

But really, what did she expect when she asked the cabbie to drop her off three streets from her new apartment in the middle of a storm? A nice walk under the tender rain of New York?

But in her defense, she wasn’t in the right state of mind. She was hungover. 

Just a few hours ago, she was at an engagement party, _her_ engagement party. It was a big ceremony with over five hundred guests, held on the old Fitzpatrick manor in England. In the Fitzpatrick clan, an engagement party was a quest for the new soon to be a member of the family. Her fiancé had to demonstrate that he was worthy of being part of the clan. He had to hunt under a full moon and bring a deer to the head of the clan, her grandfather. She hoped that her fiancé failed. She wished that the man hunting for her hand never returned. She prayed to the Lord for a miracle.

But no one heard her.

An hour after the challenge began, her fiancé was back to the main garden covered in blood and with two white deers on his shoulders. Her fiancé dropped the deers in front of her grandfather. Deers were rare in Fitzpatrick territory. Just to find one was extremely difficult, so when he came back with two white deers for the head of the clan, his spot in the family was secure, and her hand was his. 

She was _his_.

It was an old tradition that the strongest of the future couple, in this case, her fiancé, pierced the immaculate ears of the weakest betrothed, her, with their fangs. Once the ears of the weakest were pierced, the strongest must put gold earrings on them as proof that the betrothed belonged to them. Her future husband was kind enough to do it quickly, just two bites and a click from the earrings. The girl had to give him in return a small braid as a sign that she accepted him and only him. After giving him her hair, the music invaded the place. There was wine, dance, and food. 

The girl watched all night how her clan drank and danced until they dropped unconscious on the floor. Her future husband asked her to dance with him, but she refused. She told him she was still injured from the car accident a week ago, so he should dance with her cousins to strengthen his relationship with the family. Her fiancé understood and decided to dance with them. She drank in silence but not to celebrate. She had nothing to celebrate. This party was the end of her freedom... but let's be honest. 

She was born without _freedom_.

She drank until her eyes were too heavy to keep them open. She needed to go to her room. She wanted to sleep forever and _never_ wake up in this nightmare again. She wished that her dreams were nice and full of peace, but she didn’t dream. Instead, somebody held her. Somebody was carrying her away from the party while they tried to keep her awake.

Their voice was blurry and yet somehow familiar.

“You need to sober up… they’ll discover u…” The stranger said before pouring cold water on her face. 

After that, everything was confusing. 

She woke up on a plane alone and with a horrible hangover. Her ceremonial clothes were gone. Instead, she was wearing a pair of jeans and an oversize hoodie. There was a handbag with a one-way ticket to New York. She was going to New York, the forbidden city, just like her mother and she planned before… before… before she got engaged. 

Her head was too heavy and sensible until the point that she would feel her heartbeats on her head and her swollen ears. This was the first time she was hungover, and she didn’t plan to experience it again.

She looked through the rest of the bag just to find six hundred dollars in cash, some documents, and an ID with her picture on it. Her name was inscribed on the ID, well her new name, and just below it was her new address in Queens.

The girl asked the flight attendant for aspirin and a glass of water. It did nothing to cure her hangover, but it helped her to look like a normal teenager coming from spring break in England. She was really lucky that the plane was full of teenagers and college students with hangovers. She blended just right in.

After that, she was in autopilot.

She remembered that she was at the International Airport of New York four hours later. Families were waiting for their kids to come back. Some people were crying and hugging, sharing beautiful tender moments. The girl ignored them and passed right through. She needed a cabbie.

The ride to her new apartment was, in a simple word, awful.

The taxi driver had the radio at a horrible station. Every song was a mixture of techno music and static. The windows weren’t fully close, so she could hear the rain hitting the cab. The worst part of the cab was the voice of the driver. His voice was loud, and he talked and talked like an old cassette on a loop. The driver talked about how his brother just got rich by selling an invention. He had a new house and a fancy car, but his brother wasn’t able to pay the driver an old gold chain from a pawn shop. Maybe if she wasn’t so hungover, she would have paid attention to the driver. She could even have made a few comments, but all these sounds were killing her ears. It was not until she was three streets away from her new place that she couldn't tolerate this pain anymore.

“Please, stop the car!” She shouted in agony.

The cabby stopped the taxi so abruptly that she would have flown away if it wasn’t for the seatbelt. The cabby asked what was wrong, but the girl just gave him the money that the taximeter marked and left the taxi. The girl could hear the driver telling her to come to the taxi, but she didn’t care that the driver was calling her or that it was raining cats and dogs. 

She just wanted to get the fuck away from that taxi. 

...

The girl was soaked wet when she arrived at the building, but it was worth it. 

She was lucky that her new landlady was working late. If that wasn’t the case, the girl would look for another place to sleep, maybe in a hotel. The older woman was skeptical when she saw a teenager, soaked by the rain, claiming to be the new resident of the finest flats in the building, but after showing her new landlady her ID and some papers, the older woman had to escort the girl to her new flat.

“If you need anything, don’t hesitate to call me.” The landlady gave her the key and walked away from the apartment. 

Once inside, the girl quickly locked the door and dropped her bag on the floor. She took a few breaths and looked at what would be her new “home” for an unknown period. 

Her new flat was way smaller than the Fitzpatrick mansion. The whole apartment could be around the same side of the smallest ballroom in the manor, and yet it was the biggest place she had ever possessed in her life. It had all the furniture and things that she would use later thanks to Mother. There was a bedroom, a kitchen, a washing room, and even a small living room that connected the main hall to her bedroom. Yes, the place was pretty, but it was just that to her, a building. 

She opened the door to her left just to find the bathroom. She stripped down her wet clothes and tossed them on the floor. The girl opened the hot water and got in the shower. The water felt good on the girl’s skin. A normal person would have screamed at the water burning their skin, but she was not a normal person. The water didn’t burn her skin, it was curing her. It relaxed her muscles and helped her to focus on just one sound instead of all the sounds of Queens. She was a good thirty minutes in the shower when she decided to finally get out. Her body felt how the steam left her to face the coldness of the apartment.

The girl looked for a tower on the vanity unity, but she just found cleaning supplies. She thought that, maybe, the towels were in the bedroom. When she put herself back on her feet, she found her blurry reflection on the mirror. The steam of the shower covered the mirror completely making it look foggy. With a shaking hand and wrinkled fingers, the girl whipped the steam from the mirror, revealing a different person. Her reflection showed her a knock off version of her grandmother. The photos of her grandmother always showed a gorgeous woman with a bright smile full of life. Her reflection showed a tired girl with dark circles under her lifeless eyes. 

The girl touched her face in horror. The shower washed her makeup revealing horrible bruises on her upper lip and under her left eye, as well as in many parts of her body. Her face was slender as if she had not eaten for weeks. Her newly pierced ears were swollen and painted between a dark purple and red due to the biting of her fia… of that man. She still had her earrings on as a reminder that she belonged to someone else. Those earrings were like a collar that people put on their dogs to tell the world that they had a master, and that was her for the Fitzpatrick clan, an animal, a thing to bring power to the family, a pet that had a master. Maybe, it was the alcohol in her system or the talk that she had with Mother before the accident, but for the first time in years, the girl allowed herself to feel something forbidden in the walls of the Fitzpatrick manor: anger. 

The girl was filled with rage just by seeing the earrings. All her life, she belonged to somebody but never to herself. Since she was taken by her grandfather, the girl had something that showed that she belonged to someone. First, it was her hair. Her grandfather made sure to dye it platinum blond for almost fifteen years to make her look like her deceased grandmother. Then it was the tattoos. Every member of the clan had tattoos on their chest and back that represented their position and worth to the family. The more complex the tattoo, the more worth the person had in their family. The girl, being at the lowest rank, had two simple tattoos in the form of a line on her spinal cord and sternum, but still, those simple dark lines represented her grandfather’s ownership over her. And then, she was branded by those horrible earrings. Before that day, the jewelry belonged to her grandmother. They were the same earrings that his grandfather used to pierce her grandmother's ears the day that they got engaged. They marked her as his property, and now they did the same for the girl and that man. 

Tears ran through her face; Were those tears of sadness and sorrow? Or were they tears of anger and range? Maybe, it was both. The girl sobbed and let go of everything that she had on her naked chest. Her knees betrayed her and let her fall on the floor. All her life, she was raised to meet expectations, to fulfill a role, but she wasn’t so sure she wanted that role. She saw how her cousins were raised with more freedom than her. She saw how her cousins were allowed to paint their hair the way they pleased, how they could use their skills in combat while she had to sit still and look pretty, and how they were allowed to marry whoever they wanted. 

It wasn't fair.

The girl accepted everything that the clan threw at her, every insult, every hit, every challenge, but these earrings and what they represent destroyed her spirit. 

A person without spirit is just a hollow body.

She didn’t want to be hollow.

The girl pulled the earrings to take them off, but it was in vain. The earrings were made of adamantium and gold. Just an aranea prime could break them, and she was no prime. She kept pulling them until she felt a warm liquid coming from them. She realized that she would have to tear her lobules to take off those earrings. Maybe if her ears weren’t so hurt, she would have pulled off with one hit, but her ears were too sensitive. Tearing her ears in this stage would be a torture, and the pain would stay with her for a longer period. Her kind could heal fast but only if no other injuries were present. Even with this hangover, she wasn’t that crazy to inflict more pain one herself. 

But this didn’t mean that she was happy with that brand on her ears. 

The reflection in that mirror just showed her how weak she was, how pathetic she was. With all the strength left in her body, the girl stood up from the freezing floor and grabbed the frame of the mirror just to rip it off like if it wasn’t glued to the wall. The girl put the mirror on the floor, facing the wall. Her reflection was too painful to see because it was a reminder of her cowardice. 

The girl didn’t have the strength to fight her flaws.

She was so tired and hurt. Her heart was pounding along with her ears. The bruises on her torso and belly hurt every time that she breathed, and the cold air of the apartment was making her shiver. Her blond hair was dripping cold water across her back and chest, making her uncomfortable, and yet, it was her thoughts that hurt her the most. 

_Weak_

_Stupid_

_Useless_

_Whore_

_._

_._

_._

_Bastard_

Those words were imprinted deep in her mind just like her tattoos and scars were forever sealed on her body.

… 

The girl didn’t notice when she stopped crying or when she left the bathroom with her new bag and entered what looked like a bedroom. There was a vanity with a huge mirror. She was too tired to do anything to cover it. There was also a single bed placed in the middle of the room dressed with silk sheets and soft-looking pillows. It was tempting to lie down on the luxurious bed; her body craved for rest. However, the girl had learned from a young age to ignore her instincts and follow the doctrine of those who raised her. Logic mandated her to seek for something more appropriate to cover her naked body. She passed by the bed and opened the closet. 

There were clothes that Mother would certainly have used: blouses with necklines so scandalous that would make her look ridiculous, skirts soo short that could hardly cover her tights, and dresses that would only fit Mother. The girl looked through the clothes in search of something more or less proper, and at last, she found it. Inside one of the drawers of the closet, there was a night camisole just beside a set of underwear. The nightdress was black with cleavage in the form of v, which exposed a great part of her chest by ending just above her diaphragm. The nightdress ended several inches above her knees. 

The night camisole was scandalous. If she had used that nightwear in the Fitzpatrick manor, she would have been sent to the lake to sleep on a boat with only that dress, but in that apartment, there was no one but herself to see her wearing that degrading abomination. That abomination of a dress was the most adequate piece of fabric from that closet that could cover her. The girl put the camisole on along with some decent underwear from the drawer. Her hair was still wet and tangled, but that was a problem for tomorrow.

The girl dragged her body to the bed. It looked so luxurious and comfortable as if it was made by Morpheus. She got inside the bed and felt how her body relaxed at the soft touch of silk and feathers. Her eyes were too heavy to keep them open after all that crying. 

It didn’t take long before the girl lowered her guard.

She was finally warm, covered with the softest blanket she had ever touched in her life. The thunderstorm was long gone, but, still, the rain remained. To be honest, the sound of the rain falling on the streets of Queens was kind of relaxing. Even her head and ears hurt a little bit less than before. It seemed like the perfect place to rest. 

A place that made her feel relaxed and safe.

And that was the problem with that bed. 

The place was too comfortable that made the girl lowered her guard. The eighteen-year-old just ran away after her engagement party from one of the most powerful and cruelest Aranean clan in the world. The head of the family must have been enraged when he found that his precious wild rose was long gone. He must have sent parties to search for her… no… to hunt her down. By now, all the United Kingdom was searching for her, and despite that no Aranean was allowed to step on New York, according to old Araneas/Masters laws, it was only a matter of time before someone non-aranean that worked for her grandfather finds her and brings her back to England. It could be hours or months, but she was sure of something; William James Fitzpatrick will find her. 

Lowering her guard right now was the worst mistake that she could make. 

The girl jumped out of bed and rushed to the door to lock it as if, somehow, that could stop a legion of mercenaries. Then she made sure that the windows were locked. She didn’t like that her bedroom’s window was directly connected to the fire stairs of the building. She would have to fix that later. The girl tried to breathe slowly to avoid any panic or anxiety attack. She couldn’t afford one right now. 

The girl couldn’t sleep on that bed. It was too comfortable that made her senses go numb. She needed to be alert. She needed a place that could allow her to be partially aware of her surroundings and at the same time didn’t expose her to anyone that entered the room while she was resting. It took her a few moments to find the perfect place for her to rest in the room. The girl opened the doors of the closet and fixed on it a pillow and a blanket. She was lucky the closet was big enough for her, or maybe she was just too small. After getting inside the closet, she closed the doors and lied on her improvised bed.

It may have seen a ridiculous idea to change a comfortable bed for the floor, but inside that little room, she felt a _real_ sense of security. If somebody entered her room while she was sleeping, they would assume she wasn’t in the apartment at all. Besides, the girl preferred to sleep in places that were small and dark since she was little. 

There was a destiny waiting for her, but she wasn’t ready to face it because this fate wasn’t the same fate from a few hours ago.

Just a few hours ago she was Penelope Tereza Fitzpatrick-Rossi. Penelope was the granddaughter of William James Fitzpatrick, the most feared and respected Aranean in the world and head of the Fitzpatrick clan, and the fiancée of James Addington-Fitzpatrick, the heir of the Addington and Fitzpatrick clan. Her role was to unite the two clans with her future offspring. 

That was her fixed role for the rest of her life: the mother for the most powerful clan of Araneas.

But as previously mentioned, that was her destiny a few hours ago. 

Her destiny could change in a matter of minutes. She stopped being Penelope, the powerless matriarch of a clan, to become the woman in her new ID, Pen A. M. Parker. Pen was a blank sheet of paper, with no purpose and no expectations. A path so clear that was scary to take it. 

Pen closed her eyes once again, and in the darkness of the closet and the tiny light from her freckles, she fell asleep hoping for a better future… or at least for mercy. 





End file.
